NEWS

Shoppers tutting over high food prices gained a powerful ally this week as Vladimir Putin indulged in some pork-pricing, if not pork-barrel, politics. The prime minister paid a flying visit to a Moscow supermarket - and suggested that pork was over-priced.

During a discussion of food prices, the PM decided officials should continue the debate elsewhere - at a branch of the Perekryostok supermarket chain, and find out on the spot what profit margins they charged, according to the official government.ru website.

On discovering that margins on pork, selling for 335 roubles per kilogramme, were more than 50 per cent he asked retail managers: "Is this normal?"

Perekryostok agreed to cut their prices, and Putin and the government officials went back to continue their meeting.

Mind your language

A slip of the tongue could soon have costly consequences for politicians and state officials as a Russian Language commission works to outlaw "indecent language".

Although swearing is very rare on national TV - where dubbed gangsters tend to stick to the "dang and blast" school of genteel vexation - there is growing concern over milder abusive expressions from outspoken politicians, RIA Novosti reports.

Mispronunciations are also causing alarm, and Tatyana Petrova, a member of a language commission, told Trud daily: "It is unacceptable... that officials freely use indecent language when speaking on the air. We have to fight against that."

The new legislation will draw up an official standard for pronunciation and set up a blacklist of "indecent words". At present swearing in public is regarded as hooliganism, and can lead to a short custodial sentence.

Lost island

A 6,000-square metre Russian island floating in the Narva Reservoir has crossed to the Estonian side due to high water levels and strong winds, Pohjarannik newspaper reports.

Officials at Russia's Ivangorod hydroelectric plant were forced to open the gates in a hurry when the radar picked up a huge unidentified object rushing towards the dam.

Since then the four-hectare land mass has drifted into the Gulf of Finland, where it is continuing to be pushed around by winds and tides.

Good week for...

Living off the land

In addition to proposing extra support for Russia's agriculture sector, President Dmitry Medvedev has added a personal vote of approval to the nation's farmers. "In my family, as in probably any other Russian family, we ... often think that there are more chemicals in imported products. And so, in my family, we prefer to buy Russian products," he said in a TV interview published on kremlin.ru.

Bad week for...

E-spionage

A 33-year-old man shot his lover dead and attempted to kill himself after discovering his girlfriend was a transsexual, Life.ru reports. The man, known as Vladimir, became suspicious after Kamilla, 30, turned down his marriage proposal, and began hacking into her e-mail account. There he discovered that prior to surgery in Australia, Kamilla was once Kirill, prompting him to take a shotgun to a railway station in his home town of Volgograd and shooting her. He then attempted suicide, leaving a note saying he "had to leave" and couldn't forgive this "betrayal".